If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.
Interpretation
Depression is complex and not simply a reaction to life's challenges; supportive friendship is vital.
Stephen Fry's quote emphasizes the importance of understanding and supporting friends who suffer from depression. Rather than questioning the reasons behind their feelings, it encourages empathy and compassion, acknowledging that depression is an intrinsic state, much like the unpredictable nature of the weather. Being a supportive friend during such times is portrayed as an invaluable and noble act.
In practice
In a mental health awareness campaign, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of being there for friends struggling with depression.
I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.
There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.
It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.
You can't just say there is a God because well, the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.
Bumble gives men a chance to take a step back and not be the macho aggressor that they may not want to be but were socialized to be. We think it makes for a better and more peaceful environment for everyone.
The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.
Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.
Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.
If a person says or does something that we consider offensive, our first obligation is to refuse to take offense and then communicate privately, honestly, and directly with that individual. Such an approach invites inspiration from the Holy Ghost and permits misperceptions to be clarified and true intent to be understood.
Not gay, just never met the right woman.
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